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Stoats is a British company which sells porridge and other oat based products. Based in Edinburgh, Scotland, Stoats was founded in 2005 and retails in most British supermarkets with distribution across the world including Europe, Asia and UAE.
Contents
History
Porridge producer Stoats was founded by two Scots Tony Stone and Bob Arnott. Their original vision was to sell porridge in the centre of Edinburgh in a large café bar. Stone and Arnott recognised that it would be difficult to fund this venture, but undeterred and with help from the The Prince's Trust, they set off to provide hot food to UK music festivals and farmers' markets in a converted hot dog cart named the "Stoats Porridge Bar".
The Edinburgh food company progressed from the porridge trailer to marketing porridge oat bars, as the bars had become popular in Scotland. Waitrose, a supermarket chain was looking to expand in Scotland and started stocking Stoats porridge oat bars which subsequently saw a 30% year on year sales growth for the chain.
Initially based in Scotland, Stoats gained national listings in both Tesco and Waitrose. Furthering the mission to take "porridge to the people" Stoats provided 10,000 porridge bars to runners in the 2007 New York Marathon and 26,000 bowls of porridge to athletes at the 2012 London Olympic Games.
Approach
It is the intention of Stoats to "modernise porridge". Stoats founder Tony Stone said that Stoats' recipe makes it lighter and fluffier with a much better texture.
Stoats now sell a range of oat based products including porridge, quick porridge, porridge oat bars and oatcakes.
PR and Sponsorship
In 2007, weighing in at 81.2 kg, Stoats broke the Guinness World Record for the largest bowl of porridge ever made. This huge breakfast was sufficient to fill 2000 normal sized bowls of porridge. The event was staged at the Castle Street Farmers' Market in Edinburgh.
In 2016 Stoats were title sponsor of the Stoats Loony Dook
Stoats is the official 2016 partner of the World Porridge Day.